Universe Today
Saturn's "Death Star Moon" Mimas Probably has an Ocean Too
Dying Stars Could Have Completely New Habitable Zones
Venus "Quasi-moon" Just Got a Name. Henceforth, it Shall be Called Zoozve.
Black Holes Existed at the Dawn of Time, Birthing Stars and Encouraging Galaxy Formation
Cosmic Dust Could Spread Life from World to World Across the Galaxy
The SETI Ellipse Tells Us Where to Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations
One of NASA's Radio Dishes Can Now Track Space Lasers Too
Next Generation Spacesuit Gets Tested in Weightlessness
Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid
Could We Live Without Kilonovae?
The Vera Rubin's Keen Eye On Our Solar System Will Inspire Future Missions
What Happened to All Those Boulders Blasted into Space by DART?
Measuring Distances in the Universe With Fast Radio Bursts
Astronomers still aren't entirely sure what causes fast radio bursts, which can briefly release a galaxy's worth of energy. However, they might have figured out how to use them to measure distances in the Universe. In a new paper, astronomers propose that fast radio bursts could be detected as they're magnified by stellar microlenses. With about 30 microlensing events, they should be able to measure cosmic distances precisely.
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CERN Wants to Build an Enormous New Atom Smasher: the Future Circular Collider
Webb Can Directly Test One Theory for Dark Matter
"Seeing" the Dark Matter Web That Surrounds the Coma Cluster
NASA Launches a New Mission to Study the Effects of Climate Change
The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on a Black Hole's Jet
The Event Horizon Telescope has given us amazing views of the supermassive black holes at the hearts of M87 and the Milky Way. A new image from the EHT shows another black hole at the core of the radio galaxy 3C 84. Unlike the previous targets, 3C is one of the most active supermassive black holes in our vicinity, blasting enormous jets out into the cosmos. A series of images show the power of the EHT, resolving the region around the black hole where the jets form.
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Fragments From That Asteroid That Exploded Above Berlin Have Been Recovered and They're Really Special
The Early Universe Had Small Galaxies with Oversized Black Holes
Hubble Sees a Bridge of Stars Connecting Two Galaxies
NASA's JPL Lays Off Hundreds of Workers
Did the Galileo Mission Find Life on Earth?
Although it was bound for Jupiter, NASA's Galileo spacecraft made flybys of Earth in 1990 and 1992 to get boosts in its velocity. Astronomers realized this would be an ideal opportunity to test if remote imaging of Earth would detect the presence of life. In a new paper, researchers examined over 1500 photometric measurements of Earth from Galileo, judging how well it could stand in for an inhabited exoplanet.
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NASA Gives Dreamchaser the Shakedown
The Comet vs. the Eclipse: 12P/Pons-Brooks Heads Towards Perihelion in April
Comet 12P Pons-Brooks takes center stage this Spring.
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Gravitationally Lensed Supernovae are Another Way to Measure the Expansion of the Universe
Chickpeas Grown in Lunar Regolith Are Stressed but Reach Maturity
Perseverance Gives Us One Last Look at the Damaged Ingenuity Helicopter
Could Forests Become Ultrahigh Energy Neutrino Detectors?
How Does the Cosmic Web Drive Galaxy Evolution?
A Black Hole Has Cleared Out Its Neighbourhood
Dust Ruins Another Way of Measuring Distance in the Universe
Astronomers are always searching for new ways to measure distance in the Universe, especially at the greatest distances where less is known. One method measures active galaxies blasting out ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. Another measure is X-ray radiation coming from the accretion disk around a quasar. Since both methods measure the same distance to a galaxy, they should match. But they don't, and the culprit, once again, is dust absorbing and scattering UV and X-rays.
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Astronomers See 18 Examples of Stars Getting Torn Apart by Black Holes
NASA Continues Testing its New Lunar Spacesuits
Some Young Planets Are Flattened Smarties, not Spheres.
Space Force Chooses its First "Guardian" to go to Space
Astronomers Measure the Mass of the Milky Way by Calculating How Hard it is to Escape
Several techniques have been developed to measure the mass of the Milky Way, providing a range of estimates. In a new paper, a team of researchers used data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft to measure the escape velocity of the Milky Way at different distances from the galactic center and calculated its total mass, including the dark matter halo. Their measurement of 640 billion solar masses aligns with other estimates but is on the lower end.
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NASA's Juno Probe Makes Another Close Flyby of Io
NASA is One Step Closer to Deploying Fission Reactors on the Moon
The JWST Discovers a Galaxy That Shouldn't Exist
How Could Laser-Driven Lightsails Remain Stable?
How can we send spacecraft to other star systems? One proposed by Breakthrough Foundation is the Starshot, which uses high-powered lasers to accelerate tiny spacecraft to 10% the speed of light. What keeps the sail balanced as the laser strikes it and accelerates it? A new paper suggests that the laser can be tuned so that the forces are balanced on the sail, automatically correcting if any dangerous oscillations build-up that could destroy the sail.
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Atmospheres in the TRAPPIST-1 System Should be Long Gone
When the TRAPPIST-1 system was discovered, astronomers were elated to find seven Earth-sized worlds, three in the star's habitable zone. JWST has made follow-up observations and failed to detect atmospheres in the first two planets. What about the rest? According to a new paper, the solar winds and powerful flares should have stripped away the atmospheres from the rest of the planets within 100 million years of formation - they're long gone.
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Astronomers are Getting Really Good at Weighing Baby Supermassive Black Holes
Half the Entire Sky, Seen in X-Rays
A Super-Earth (and Possible Earth-Sized) Exoplanet Found in the Habitable Zone
How Dangerous are Kilonovae?
Neutron stars' collisions create powerful explosions, a type of gamma-ray burst known as a kilonova. What would it be like to be too close to a kilonova? Work has been done to calculate the risk of being in the beam of a gamma-ray burst, but a new paper looks at what would happen if you were off the axis to a kilonova. Researchers calculated that X-rays would be lethal to 3 light years, gamma rays out 13 light years, and cosmic rays could kill you at 36 light-years.
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An Astronaut Controls a Robotic Dog From Orbit
Japan Moon Lander Sleeps After Sending Science — Will It Wake Up Again?
Space Junk is Going to be a Problem for Vera Rubin
Asteroid Ryugu Contained Bonus Comet Particles
